Dr. Vanessa Brum-Bastos – Becoming an international scholar

• Dr. Vanessa Brum-Bastos specialises in adding context to human mobility models 
• Her interest in geodesy comes from her childhood love of maps

Her partnership with UPWr began after she met UPWr alumni Dr. Katarzyna Śliwa-Nowicka at St. Andrews University in Scotland who referred her to the Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences in Poland. – She got me in touch with PhD student Kamil Smolak and we published a paper together. That’s how we started our collaboration. Then the possibility of a fellowship came up and we decided to write a project on human mobility – says Dr. Brum-Bastos.

Adding context to human mobility

The project revolves around improving the human mobility model that the SpaceOs Leading Research Group at UPWr had developed. – A human mobility model at population level can basically predict the flow of people in an urban area. Thanks to data from mobile devices, we can pinpoint where people are moving, or what they are doing – says Dr Vanessa Brum-Bastos, adding that the first priority of the team is to anonymise all the data and the second is to predict changes and create scenarios, based on the flow.

– The kind of data we use to predict the movement shouldn’t raise privacy concerns. It consists of timestamps and locations assigned to the ID number of a device. We keep everything secure on encrypted servers and we don’t track anyone individually – says the scientist, explaining that this information can be used for policy making, transportation planning, infrastructure planning and land use management. – Cities are divided into zones and we can predict how many people will be in each of these zones at any given hour of the day. It makes us realise, for example, which areas need more buses, at what hour traffic jams happen and where the biggest concentration of people is – she adds.

The SpaceOs Leading Research Group had already made a basic mobility model, and Dr. Vanessa Brum-Bastos’ task was to add context and more variables to make the model more accurate. – At the moment we have two points – workplaces and homes. By adding weather data, or vegetation data, or any other kind of variable to the movement model we can improve it significantly. Our hypothesis is that if we add weather variables to the model that was created, we can improve the accuracy and allow it to perform better – explains Dr. Vanessa Brum-Bastos, adding that they will eventually add more points to the mobility model, such as gyms and other places where people spend a lot of their time. 

"I really loved maps"

Dr. Vanessa Brum-Bastos became interested in geodesy and geography when she was young. – I really loved maps. I remember when we moved into a bigger house, my mum decorated the dining room with a world map and I just kept staring at it every day, wondering if the world really was that big. Then this interest just kept growing. As I went to school I became interested in geography, then eventually I got into remote sensing and now I’m here doing spatial analysis, in Europe and will be moving to New Zealand in a few days! – says the scientist, who’s leaving for Down Under to become a spatial data science lecturer at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. – It’s a permanent contract, so I’m moving there for good – says Dr. Vanessa Brum-Bastos – adding that she will still be collaborating with the Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences, becoming an international scholar. – I'll still be associated with the Leading Research Group at UPWr to finish this project and maybe research more variables, and add other contexts. I might also work in part of the Horizon Europe One Nest project which focuses on modeling and projecting asian influenza – she says.

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